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Welcome to The Learning Curve, 

I hope this finds you all well. I have just finished the “Webinar with Wellings” which explored the strategic developments we are undertaking as a school. Thank you to all of you who attended. I hope you found this useful.  It was great to see the positive comments and to field some excellent questions. For anyone who missed it you can listen to the audio version on this weeks “Take the Stairs” podcast. I’ll also be producing a short “student friendly” videocast to be shared next week.

The main topics discussed were: 

  • Our school identity and our new visual identity
  • The new school values and how we intend to use them
  • The structure of the day and the week for the school year 2021/22

I started the presentation with a few quotes on change. Perhaps my favorite one is this:

“We can’t be afraid of change. You may feel very secure in the pond that you are in, but if you never venture out of it, you will never know that there is such a thing as an ocean”.

C. JoyBell

I must qualify my use of this quote as it can be read in a negative and reductive way that could suggest that Mougins School is naive and extremely inward looking. Please don’t read it like that. It is not intended. 

Instead it should be thought of as referring to positive and thoughtful change that, although uncomfortable, might take us to new places and discover new things. Whether individually or institutionally we are all limited to a greater or lesser extent, by our own experience. Ultimately, we don’t know what we don’t know! Accepting this empowers us to change it. 

The changes we are bringing are quick (and perhaps quicker than I would have originally planned) but they really should help us to move forward and develop much stronger systems for the really positive change that our school deserves. 

So to lean heavily on the pond / ocean metaphor, as we embark on this voyage of change we can be excited but understand that it will not always be plain sailing. This is a given.  However, we can work together as a crew, communicating well, adjusting where necessary and perhaps even fixing some things that break along the way. 

I believe this school has both a great crew and a sturdy vessel.  We will sail out into the ocean and then who knows what we’ll discover. 

Land Ho! 

Have a lovely weekend everyone

James Wellings
Head of School